Halloween

Halloween Fiction in a Flash: Big Dogs Drag Things

/ Elizabeth Gaucher / 3 Comments

If you read this blog regularly, you know I’m a big fan of the 100-word flash fiction model. It creates a structure that imposes discipline, as does the sonnet. There are rules. My process is to keep a tight leash on my sentences but not self-edit much in the draft phase. The fun comes when I do a word count and have to start paring down, replacing, refining.

There is an effort to collect 100-word stories on this site, 100 Word Story.

I got started with Loren Eaton’s Advent Ghosts. This Halloween story, “Big Dogs Drag Things,” is for my friend Eric Douglas. I like what Eric says, “(T)his particular brand of flash fiction is telling a complete story in 100 words. Not more. Not less. It can be a lot of fun. And it can also be challenging. Sometimes what is most important is what is left unsaid.”

I hope you enjoy my story, based on the real life reporting of my friend Rick Wilson about his Great Pyrenees dog, Arpad. Arpad is a legend in my house. I’m living life now with my first-ever large breed dog. So far, no body parts have come home. But I know they could.

I’ll leave the rest unsaid.

Photo courtesy of Rick Wilson

Photo courtesy of Rick Wilson

Big Dogs Drag Things Home

Big dogs drag things home. An enormous thunking and I pull back the curtain. It’s a bloody leg. Hair, bone, skin. A hoof. Must have been a deer. I don’t know where she found it or why she thinks I want it. The scent? A late-night walk in the woods. I could see everything in the natural light.

The drain is clogged again. The tub is stained. I get out, brush my teeth, look at them. Look at my face. She licks my ankle, gazing up, patient. I unlock the large breed iron crate I tell everyone is for her.

An Esse Diem Halloween Story 2013: The Man by My Bed

/ Elizabeth Gaucher / 2 Comments

Last year I posted a rambling ghost story from a dream I had. You can read it beginning here.

This year my friend Eric Douglas posted his own (Call of the Raven Mocker), and I was inspired to share another dream. At least, I hope that’s what it was.

A few nights ago I opened my eyes in the dark to see a man standing beside my bed.

The man was not anyone I knew. My husband lay beside me, sound asleep. Only he and I and our child live in our house. I knew this man was an intruder.

He was illuminated by a strange orange light, and it appeared to emanate from something he was holding his hand. He was scanning around by the head of the bed, and on the floor. He didn’t see me looking at him.

I held my eyes wide open. I felt as if I blinked or closed my eyes or moved in any way, that is what would allow him to see me. He might think I was still asleep if I just didn’t move at all.

In my mind, I wanted to scream. I wanted to scream to my husband, to wake him to face this man, to help me. But inside I knew I was too frightened to make enough noise to do anything but alert the intruder to my awareness of his presence. The whole time, my heart rate was steady. I could not figure out why it wasn’t pounding.

Finally I realized it was a dream of some kind. I forced my eyelids closed. I knew when I woke up this would all be gone.

I waited a minute and opened my eyes.

The man was still there. He looked right into my eyes. I started blinking my eyes as fast as I could. Wake up wake up wake up this is not real. Wake up wake up wake up.

Each time I opened my eyes, he was still there. I finally closed my eyes as hard as I could and eventually the sun came up.

Last night when I was giving my daughter a bath, for the first time ever she stopped playing  and said, “I want out. I want out now.”

“Why?” I asked, confused.

“Because I do. I just want out right now.”

I took her out. I put her to bed.

Two weeks after I first saw him, when I open my eyes I still see his shadow beside my bed. Not the orange light. Not his eyes.

But he is still standing there.